Moments after winning the second Super Bowl of his career, Travis Kelce had a message for all the doubters. “Not one of y’all said the Chiefs were gonna take it home this year,” he claimed in February 2023, after Kansas City beat Philadelphia to win the title. “Not a single one! Feel that shit. Feel it! And on top of that, the next time the Chiefs say something, put some respect on our name!”
There was, of course, plenty of respect on Kansas City’s name before the team won that game. The Chiefs were the betting favorite to win the Super Bowl entering the playoffs. They finished the regular season with a 14-3 record, tied for the NFL’s best. Patrick Mahomes won MVP, and the team led the league with six All-Pro selections. The idea that Kansas City was an underdog was laughable even then. And after the Chiefs won the Lombardi Trophy again this past February, after sleepwalking through the regular season, it got even harder to make that claim with a straight face.
But the 2024 season has felt like an elaborate ruse to try to get us to actually count out the Chiefs this time. Despite Kansas City’s gaudy 13-1 record, Buffalo and Philadelphia have better odds of winning the Super Bowl; 10 teams have a better point differential than the defending champs’ plus-70, including Denver and Washington. A team with that point differential is expected to have a record of 9-5, per Pro Football Reference. The Chiefs are punching well above their weight—and their record has been built on preposterous luck in close games. I mean, just read these end-of-game sequences. They sound scripted:
Week 1: Ravens tight end Isaiah Likely catches the game-tying touchdown as time expires, but replay shows that his toe was just out of bounds, giving the Chiefs a 27-20 win.
Week 2: The Bengals, leading by two points, are called for defensive pass interference on fourth-and-16 with 48 seconds left. The penalty yardage puts the Chiefs in range for a game-winning field goal as time expires.
Week 3: The Falcons, trailing by five with under a minute remaining, are stuffed on third-and-1 and fourth-and-1 from the Kansas City 13-yard-line, giving the Chiefs a 22-17 win.
Week 10: With the Chiefs clinging to a two-point lead over Denver, Leo Chenal blocks a chip-shot field goal to preserve the win in the game’s final seconds.
Week 13: Trailing by two points, the Raiders march into field goal range but never get a chance to kick after the Chiefs recover a fumble on a botched shotgun snap.
Week 14: Trailing the Chargers by a point, the Chiefs doink in the game-winning field goal as time expires.
Based on DVOA, the Chiefs are the seventh-best team in football, but even that feels too high—mostly due to how the offense has performed lately. That side of the ball is on pace to have its worst month since the Mahomes era started in 2018, with lows in expected points added per play, yards per play, explosive play rate, and series conversion rate. All while Mahomes is facing pressure at his highest rate ever over the course of a month. Complicating matters, Mahomes left Sunday’s win over the Browns with a high ankle sprain. And with three top-10 defenses left on the schedule in Houston, Pittsburgh, and Denver, the offense could sink even further before the playoffs. For the first time in the Mahomes era, the Chiefs may actually be viewed as the underdogs Kelce claimed they were two years ago.
Now, I’m not about to say the Chiefs won’t win the Super Bowl this season. But I can confidently say they won’t if Andy Reid and a hobbled Mahomes can’t jump-start the passing game, which broke down a few weeks ago. Since Week 12, the Chiefs quarterback has ranked in the bottom half of the league in yards per dropback (26th) and EPA per dropback (18th). Those aren’t championship numbers, and they’re unacceptable for an offense that’s led by the best quarterback in the sport. We’ve seen the Chiefs win championships in a variety of styles, but the common denominator in all of their title-winning runs has been an efficient playoff passing game.
The team spent the offseason talking about the deep passing game and how that could solve the scoring issue the offense ran into last year. Mahomes said in May that this offense was “built to throw the ball deep.” Offensive coordinator Matt Nagy said in July that “we’re going to try to go deep as much as we can,” and Reid trolled Mahomes whenever he passed on a deep shot during minicamp to motivate him to push it downfield more often. The Chiefs used a first-round pick this year on Xavier Worthy, who ran the fastest 40 time in combine history, and they brought in former first-round pick Hollywood Brown to add even more speed to the receiving corps.
But Brown has yet to play in the regular season after suffering an injury in camp, and the team lost receiver Rashee Rice to a torn ACL four games into the season. Worthy has gone through rookie growing pains and has yet to break out as a deep threat. As a result, Mahomes has completed fewer deep passes this season than any full-time starter, per TruMedia. His 6.4-yard average depth of target would be a career low, and it ranks 32nd in the NFL this season.
The lack of deep-ball success is getting in Mahomes’s head. Earlier this season, he talked about adopting a “fuck it” mentality when it comes to throwing deep. “When I was younger, I would just cut it loose,” Mahomes told The Kansas City Star in October. “I would just go through the reads the way [it] said on paper, and I would throw the deep shot if it was there—like, give it chances. And there are times now where I’m like, well, they’re in this coverage, and that’s not supposed to be there. But it is. … Sometimes you give the defense too much credit.”
As we’ve gotten deeper into the season, that “fuck it” attitude has transformed into pure desperation. Mahomes now seems to be trying too hard to connect on the deep ball, and it’s hurting the offense. Two plays stood out in Sunday’s game against Cleveland. The first one came early, when Mahomes had Worthy open on a shallow route on third-and-short but instead chucked a deep ball to a double-covered Justin Watson. Watson was flagged for offensive pass interference after trying to prevent an interception.
Later in the game, Mahomes passed up an open Kelce, who was sitting beyond the first-down marker, to force a difficult downfield throw to Worthy.
Inconsistent decision-making from Mahomes—from being too hesitant to push the ball downfield early in the season and now being too eager to do so—has contributed to the disappearance of the deep ball from Kansas City’s offense, but it’s not the biggest culprit. That would be the offensive line—and the two tackle spots, in particular. The left tackle position has been a black hole on the depth chart for a few years now. The plan this season was to let 2023 third-round pick Wanya Morris and rookie second-rounder Kingsley Suamataia battle for the starting job in training camp. But neither ended up being great options. Suamataia won the mid-off in camp but was benched after two weeks. Morris did a decent job in his first couple of months as a starter, but he got hurt in the Week 10 win over the Broncos, and his play has fallen off considerably since. Kansas City signed veteran free agent D.J. Humphries in late November, but he hurt his hamstring in his debut against the Chargers in Week 14 and hasn’t practiced since. Last week, a desperate Reid shifted left guard Joe Thuney out to tackle, moving one of his better offensive linemen out of position.
Then there’s the right side of the line, where Jawaan Taylor has held down the starting tackle job all season even though he hasn’t played well. Only seven offensive tackles have allowed more sacks than the seven Taylor has surrendered this season. There’s no hope for developing a deep passing game if Mahomes doesn’t have enough time to get those throws off. There have been several instances in the past few weeks when Mahomes had a receiver break open downfield, but the pass protection didn’t hold up long enough for him to make a play.
The receiving corps has also been at fault for some missed downfield connections. With Rice and Brown out, Mahomes’s most reliable deep threat might be Watson. Worthy has had issues tracking the ball deep, trade deadline acquisition DeAndre Hopkins is still working on his connection with Mahomes, and while Kelce is still a reliable outlet for his quarterback on underneath throws, he’s having trouble separating on deeper routes as he loses speed. The Chiefs are providing their quarterback almost no margin for error when he throws it deep.
With all of that, it’s no wonder the Chiefs have left a lot of explosive plays on the field in the past few weeks.
But the good news is that you can’t have missed opportunities if you’re not creating opportunities in the first place. And the Chiefs have been doing a better job of that recently compared with early in the season. Judging by the video above, Kansas City isn’t that far off from hitting on some of these deep shots. If the protection can hold up just a fraction of a second longer, or the receivers are just a little bit tighter on their routes, or Mahomes improves his timing ever so slightly, this offense would be good enough to contend for a title.
And there’s reason to believe the receiving corps should improve. Mahomes is growing more comfortable with Hopkins. Worthy is getting more playing time and getting open more often. And Brown returned to practice last week, so Mahomes will have another field stretcher to target with deep passes—and this one has a track record of success in the role.
The offensive line is another issue. The only reinforcement on the way is Humphries, who should eventually return from his hamstring injury. But it’s been three years since he’s played quality football and he was on his couch just a few weeks ago, so it’s unlikely that he’ll be the solution to Kansas City’s left tackle problem. Keeping Thuney at that spot, where he held his own against Myles Garrett in Week 15 spot duty, could be another option.
Because of this downfield ineffectiveness, though, the Chiefs have become more reliant on Mahomes Magic to keep stacking wins and to maintain their lead over the Bills in the race for home-field advantage in the AFC playoffs. Kansas City might be on a three-game losing streak right now if Mahomes weren’t able to pull off all these miracles.
Those plays will be harder to make now that Mahomes is nursing a sprained ankle, but there is some good news on that front. He says the injury is responding “better” and “quicker” than the high ankle sprain he suffered in the 2023 AFC divisional round win over the Jaguars. (Mahomes didn’t miss any time due to that injury, and he had one of the best Super Bowl performances we’ve ever seen three weeks later.) He has been a full participant at practice this week, which makes it easier to believe that he’ll be able to play through this injury.
The Chiefs do have concerning flaws, and the hole at left tackle could even be a fatal one—but every contender has its issues in this wide-open NFL season. The Bills defense has given up more than 40 points a game in the past two weeks. The Ravens lead the NFL in penalties, and Justin Tucker can’t make a kick. Half of the Lions’ starting lineup is on the injured list. The Eagles don’t have a reliable passing game. The Vikings are starting Sam Darnold at quarterback. And none of those teams have Patrick Mahomes. Kansas City may not be the favorite to win the Super Bowl, but it’s still very much a threat to do so. And if the two-time defending champs do make it three titles in a row, we can play along when they inevitably claim that nobody believed in them. This time around, it’s kind of true.
